"Aha! you recognise me, then?"
continued Signer Ventimillioni. "Do you know
that I have been looking for you this half-
hour?"

"I do not know you," faltered Lily. " Good
night!"

"Not so fast, picciolina mia. We are not to
part in such a hurry." And the Italian laid his
hand on Lily's arm.

"Let me go! let me go!" cried the terrified
girl. "Let me go home."

"Precisely, that is where I am going to take
you. There is a lady at home who is expecting
you most anxiously. You have kept her
waiting a very long time. Whole years. Home
indeed. Aha! you little runaway!"

He tightened his grasp. He passed the other
hand round her waist. Lily tried to scream,
when, suddenly some loose garment was thrown
over her head, and another pair of hands were
clasped over her mouth.

"Enough of this trifling," grumbled very
hoarsely a man who had been lurking a few
paces behind the Italian during his parley with
Lily. "Come, my Phidias of the painting-
room, bring the young toad along, or some
sergent de ville will be passing by."

"Don't smother her, Demosthène,"
remonstrated the Italian. " Take the cloak off her
head, and your hands off her mouth, and let us
try to make her listen to reason. Des
convenances, mon garçon; n'oublions jamais les
convenances."

The second man did, sulkily, as he was
bid, but he planted his great hands on Lily's
shoulders, and kept them there. The girl
was too terrified to speak; but palpitated in
the grasp of the two ruffians like a captured
bird.

"Listen to me, ma mie," went on the Italian,
putting his face so close to Lily that she could
feel his beard upon her cheek; " you are coming
home with us. You are our prisoner, if you
like that tournure de phrase better. Come
quietly, and no harm will be done you; but
dare to call for assistance, and I will put this
pretty little bodkin into you."

He drew, as quick as lightning, a long knife
that glittered in the lamplight. Lily saw that
she was lost. She could hear the distant hum
of the crowd, and the clanging of the music;
but the spot was solitary, and she was beyond
all human help.

"Will you be quiet, then?" the Italian asked,
half caressingly, half threateningly.

Lily murmured a faint affirmative.

"That's right. Now, Demosthène, let us take
her between us. Don't forget that little bright
bodkin of mine, little one."

The two strong men hooked their arms in
these of the girl, and led her rapidly away.
They plunged into an alley between the trees,
and which seemed entirely deserted. But as
though in mockery at her utter wretchedness and
state of bondage, she saw gleaming from behind
the tufted trees the first sparkle of the
fireworks, those fireworks which were to culminate
in a resplendent bouquet, in which Liberty was
to have her annual apotheosis, and the twenty-
seventh, twenty-eighth, and twenty-ninth of
July to be made glorious for ever.

They were now walking by the water-side.
That it was the Seine Lily knew, for she could
see the lamps on the Pont Louis Seize, and
the Chamber of Deputies flaring with lampions.
They stopped before a mean wooden building,
having seemingly but one window, through
whose dirty panes a light feebly glimmered.

The Italian pushed at the door, which gave
way, and they passed in. There was a narrow
passage, and by the light of a swinging cresset
Lily could see a woman who was rushing towards
her—a woman huddled in an old plaid shawl,
whose hair was dishevelled, and whose face was
painted. It was the Wild Woman of the
Elysian Fields.

CHAPTER XLIII. THE SULTAN IN LONDON.

WHAT is a year? Psha! what are ten?
When you are young, a year seems a very long
time. That last month before you are twenty-
one, or before you leave school, or get your
commission, or pass your examination for the
civil service, the month it takes for your
moustaches to grow, how it lags, how it loiters, how
every moment seems to have its feet clogged by
leaden weights! Do our best as we may to
squander the days in recklessness and
prodigality, what a weary time elapses before we are
thirty years of age, and fogies cease to tell us
that, as young men, we should defer to the
opinion of our elders. Never was there, perhaps,
a sane woman of twenty-nine who passed herself
off as thirty-one; but how often does a young
middle-aged man slily add on a year or two?
But hey! when the mezzo cammen is reached,
how swiftly the years fly! We lose count.
Sixty-two melts into sixty-three, and that into
sixty-four, without our special notice. Things
pass as in a dream. The day before yesterday,
why, it was eighteen months ago. Our newly-
formed acquaintance, why we have known him
these eight years. The far-off goal of grey
hairs, and toothlessness, and the tomb, why we
are close upon it. It was a tedious pull to
Tattenham Corner; it is a lightning rush to
the judge's stand, even if we come in with the
ruck.

A year had passed since the events
previously narrated. Madame de Kergolay was dead.
She passed away very peacefully, leaving the
bulk of that which she possessed to her
beloved grand-nephew, Edgar Greyfaunt. It was
not much, but it was a capital to be turned into
ready money, and that was all the young man
wanted. It is due to the memory of the good
old lady in Paris to state that she freely forgave
poor little Lily before her death. Her ire,
indeed, against the girl had lasted but a very
short time. She had been shocked and pained
by her disappearance, and had made every effort
to gain tidings of her, but in vain. By degrees
the vengeful pride which had led her to crush